Posted
by
timothyon Friday July 30, 2010 @01:57AM
from the sorry-kids dept.

astroengine writes "Sure, we're looking 172 years into the future, but an international collaboration of scientists have developed two mathematical models to help predict when a potentially hazardous asteroid (or PHA) may hit us, not in this century, but the next. The rationale is that to stand any hope in deflecting a civilization-ending or extinction-level impact, we need as much time as possible to deal with the threatening space rock. (Asteroid deflection can be a time-consuming venture, after all.) Enter '(101955) 1999 RQ36' — an Apollo class, Earth-crossing, 500 meter-wide space rock. The prediction is that 1999 RQ36 has a 1-in-1,000 chance of hitting us in the future, and according to one of the study's scientists, María Eugenia Sansaturio, half of those odds fall squarely on the year 2182."

I imagine some people have, or plan to have, children which they will have some degree of fondness towards. As it may effect their children, or their children's children, it might be of some concern to you.

Also, I'm pretty sure an unusually high percentage of Slashdot readers are not planning on dying. I mean, that's pretty much what science is for, right? I'm very concerned about how this asteroid will affect my robot-body . . .

Also, I'm pretty sure an unusually high percentage of Slashdot readers are not planning on dying. I mean, that's pretty much what science is for, right? I'm very concerned about how this asteroid will affect my robot-body . ..

Sad reality: if the robot-body technology WAS developed within our lifetimes, the vast majority of us couldn't afford it. That's going to be the ugly truth when it gets here: "immortality" will only be for the rich. The rest of us will live and die like we always have.

That said - 500 meters? That's enough to cause some SERIOUS devastation, but it's not an extinction event impact. 6 miles wide killed the dinosaurs, but didn't wipe out EVERYTHING. This is 0.3 miles wide. As long as civilization as a whole goes on then I'm not TOO worried. Afterall, if they fail to successfully deflect it, the survivors could look at it as a learning experience.

Well, we should be concerned about what happens to our home planet, right? If you knew for sure that an asteroid would cause the extinction of humanity on Earth in the year 2182, and we failed to prevent it, would you care? Anyways, I'd rather we have as much time as possible to deal with potentially fatal threats to our species, and hope that we have the science by then to either deflect the asteroid or preserve Bruce Willis.

Statistically, we've probably discovered 1% of the potentially hazardous asteroids. Now we have a data point for an interesting occurrence: one of the ones we know about has a good chance of hitting us. What about the rest of them?

THE TORINO IMPACT HAZARD SCALENo Hazard(White Zone)0
The likelihood of a collision is zero, or is so low as to be effectively zero. Also applies to small objects such as meteors and bodies that burn up in the atmosphere as well as infrequent meteorite falls that rarely cause damage.

Sad reality: if the robot-body technology WAS developed within our lifetimes, the vast majority of us couldn't afford it.

Oh I'm sure that banks will be willing to give you a loan to purchase (or better still - rent) your immortal robot-body, after all - you are going to have hundreds of years to pay it off.
I know some executives who would salivate at the idea of having an indentured workforce like that.

If you think that's enough to completely wipe out our species, I have a bridge to sell you.

It may not be life as we know it, but whether you like it or not humans as a species will survive ALL of that, AND more. All we need is some percentage of newborns to make it to, oh, let's be generous and say age 17. They breed. There's more of us.

You don't need cars, or computers, or even a houses to have humans. All you need is sharp, pointy sticks, a few friends, and some of those friends to be of the opposite sex. That's it.

Any large enough company would have the resources to divert the asteroid. It would be in their interest to extract as much money or property as possible as payment. As long as the asteroid has not been fully diverted and as long as they can still divert it to hit the earth, they can extract monthly payments. It will be in their interest to indefinitely keep the asteroid in an orbit where it can target the earth. Since everyone will have to pay or die we'll all be slaves to Sony, Microsoft and Intel, just like we are now.

Better telescopes is moot. Figuring out the position and velocity of any specific detectable object in the solar system has been trivial for a long time now. The problem is our ability to predict how it will interact with every other body in the next hundred years. If it was a comet, and ignoring any potential flybys of smaller planets, just calculating how it will interact with Jupiter and the Sun every year for 100 passes adds more than a few earth diameters of uncertainty to the results.

but whether you like it or not humans as a species will survive ALL of that, AND more

I don't know if you understand how little it would take to make Earth uninhabitable by humans.

It's just a very long list of lucky breaks that makes Earth habitable by humans in the first place. Unless you're religious, then it was by the will of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (blessings upon His Holy Name).

It's hard to imagine a pre-industrial world being able to make (or even discover) ethanol fuel without oil-powered industry behind them. Keep in mind that humans have been around for many thousands of years and only in the last few decades have we discovered that all this corn lying around is good for fuel. It takes an advanced level of technology to exploit more subtle resources like ethanol.